#183 Life on Your Terms

Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. Hey, everyone. I'm excited this week to talk to two good friends of mine. These. These people are Dr. Letizia Alto and Kenji Asakura. They are the founders and the people who run Semi Retired md. They are fantastic people. They're both physicians. They're a couple. They've had this amazing journey of transformation from being physicians to real estate investors to entrepreneurs Again, I've gotten to know them so well over the last couple years, and many of you might have heard their stories, but we're going to share something about a new development that they have in their lives right now. They are the authors of a new book. The book is called Life on your Terms. We're going to talk all about this. It's the physician's journey through all of this stuff. And I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to it. And so I'm excited to talk about it today. Hey, guys. How you doing?

Hey, Peter and everyone. We're so excited to be here. And yeah, thank you for having us.

You guys are now authors. I mean, I'm jealous because I'm not there yet. Something I'm working on, but you guys have done this. Let's talk a little bit about this process and why you decided to do it. Why did you decide to even write a book?

So we decided to write a book because books have played such a huge role in our lives, in our transformation. As some of, you know, Rich Dad, Poor dad. When we read that, it actually kicked off our whole real estate journey together and just inspired us to start to take action. And then we went and read several other books and put them into practice. So this has been such a key part of our life, is reading books together and then going out and taking action on them, that we really wanted to be able to reach and impact a larger community than we do right now. And this book is. Is our gift out there to help others be able to read it and then ideally take action and start to consider real estate if they're not considering it, and then maybe even go on and take the steps to build a portfolio.

Yeah, it's all about impacting more lives and helping more people. And I just love the idea that you can write a book and impact somebody's life maybe 10 years from now, just like Rich Dad, Poor dad did for us. I Mean, I think that was published probably. I don't know. I mean, by the time we read it was probably 20 years since it was originally published. So it impacted our lives, and it continues to impact people's lives. So we hope that our book does the same for doctors.

When you talk about impacting your lives, let's tell people, where are you today with your journey? We all kind of have probably heard some of your story, but let's kind of get through that and jump to where you are today. Like, what does your life look like today?

So back in 2015, Kenji and I decided to invest in real estate together. And what we were envisioning is having this ability to live in different countries, to be able to travel, to be able to have our friends, also have freedom and be able to spend time with us. And that was back in 2015, and we achieved financial freedom by the end of 2018. And now today, we have 100 over 150 doors of real estate. We've actually been GPS on a number of deals. And then we have that exactly what we wanted. We've been traveling now for about six months with our kids. We've been living in different countries. We have the ability to have our friends with us, which is an amazing experience. We hosted a party this summer in Italy, and a number of people from our community came to experience this kind of dream. And it was the first step in really making that a reality. And so this has all been really possible by taking the first step in investing in real estate and getting this other source of income outside of medicine, and. And then helping others do that so that they can be free, too.

Yeah, I think the big difference between the first time we started traveling in 2018 and this time is that we now have a community of who are. Who have more degrees of freedom, and so they're able to join us this. So this coming summer, we have a number of us going on a trip to Greece together. So it just really has expanded way beyond just the two of us. And it's. And that. That is extremely rewarding for us.

I mean, that sounds amazing. I think it's the life that many of us want to live, but many of us don't know how to make it happen. Does this book talk about that specifically, and is it really your story in a nutshell? Maybe we want to talk a little bit about what the book goes through.

The book is a fable, and it's written as a story of two couples. And there's a couple that is Maya and Jay, and they're both physicians and they take the journey of becoming real estate investors on top of physicians. And then the other couple just stays the traditional route of investing in their 401ks and working harder and kind of running in the rat race for longer. And that couple that does go invest in real estate, you know, what they do is they build up a portfolio and we show how they do it. We show their cash and cash calculations, how they build their team. Like we show you all the steps that you need to follow to be able to do that successfully. We show a lot of challenges, but there in a lot of drama to make it exciting and to show you the mindset piece too of how they have to use their mindset to overcome challenges that are really inevitable. And yeah, how they end up building this significant amount of cash flow that then allows them to be free. And they do make those changes. Like one of them becomes volunteer, like becomes a volunteer doc and just does what he wants just because of his mission and is spending some of the time, a lot of his time doing real estate. And then the other one is able to cut back and spend more time with their family. And so it's just about achieving that freedom through real estate. And we show exactly how to do that in the book.

I mean, do you think it's a book that's written for someone who is already, you know, far along in the journey for them to be able to understand? Is it for somebody kind of who just start to explore? What is this really geared towards?

Yeah, it really is really geared towards anybody anywhere on their journey. Because as Leyte was saying, we put in a lot of challenges in there. And these challenges occur not just in the beginning of your journey when you're just getting started and you're thinking about getting into something completely new, something that's so foreign to you, so different than medicine. You know, there's going to be fears there. And ultimately, if you want to have achieve a certain dream or if you want that, the degrees of freedom we just talked about, then you have to overcome those fears. Right? You have to push through and, and, and, and do it despite the fears. And those fears will come about any time and throughout your journey. So I'll give you an example. Like for, for me now, even so far into my journey, as I think about bigger and bigger properties or developing hundred unit apartment complexes, which I haven't done yet. Right. Of course there's going to be some fears associated with it. So you are going to encounter these challenges. And so yeah, we share how important this mindset is how important it is to push through those fears and limiting beliefs. And so I think that yeah, anybody can benefit from this book.

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Yeah, I think real estate is one of the easiest ways actually to get into entrepreneurship. You know, Kenji's actually had a long entrepreneur journey. We started semi retired MD together and that I think. Our mentor, Keith Cunningham talks about entrepreneurship and starting a business from scratch. He likens it to going out and putting together an airplane from all the different pieces, learning, you know, fueling it and then learning to fly and going and flying it. So that's like starting a business from scratch. Real estate's very different because it's something that you can do on the side. You can continue to work even full time as a doc, but you're buying a business that's already running. So each apartment building is a business that is already put together and already has the pieces in place. And so it's really plug and play. You have the customers who are people who need homes or, or if you're buying a short term rental, people who want to have a vacation place to stay. You have all the members of your team already trained up. So you have property managers, you have contractors, you have CPAs who really focused on real estate. So you don't have to train your team members either. So you just go and you hire your team members or maybe you even use the same team members that are already in place with your building. You improve it, you have that ability to do it on the side. It's not all consuming. So I think it's such a really great way for physicians to dip their toes into entrepreneurship and then to build this other source of income. Because ultimately if you're just relying on your physician job, you only have one source of income and you never know what's going to happen. But if you have a couple sources, like we all know, ideally like 13 sources, right, like Ray Dalio says, then that's going to help you be able to weather any time and do well no matter what's happening.

And to complete the analogy that Keith Cunningham shares, you know, getting into the rental business is like parachuting into the co pilot seat of a flying plane. And then you have somebody like, you know, maybe me and lady or maybe you, Peter, in the pilot seat who can mentor them and show them the ropes, you know, show them how to do this. And that's just a much more efficient way of starting a business rather than starting it from scratch with all the pieces laid out on the tarmacs.

What do you guys think is happening right now in the market? From what you guys see and, and how do you feel like this is a good time for people to get in the game or should they wait?

Yeah, I, I mean for us, we think that it, you don't want to ever time your education, right? You didn't wait to, you know, to go to medical school or do residency. When the timing was right, you just went ahead and did it because you had a dream of, of becoming a doctor and living that lifestyle. And, and so you just went and did it. And same thing here is that you don't want to time your education, you don't want to wait till the timing is right. And then once you, once you educate yourself, what happens is, is all these doors start to open up, all these opportunities. And with real estate investing and just like anything, just like investing in general, you don't want to time the market. There you can, you can invest and do well in any market as long, as long as you know what you're doing, as long as you have taken the time to educate yourself, you can be successful in any market.

Now how do you feel about that? Like, how do you feel about this time right now? Do you feel like, I mean, is There anything else you want to add or is there something like, where people, again, I hear about quite a bit, like people are saying, like, wow, there's probably more down to go at this point. And so maybe we should wait to think about actually investing. What do you say to that?

Yeah, I, I remember when we first started investing, and that was in 2015 when we started together. And people told us at that point, like, hey, we're about to in a bubble, like, don't invest, wait. And I just can imagine what would have happened if we had waited all this time sitting on the sidelines, like, how much we would have lost. So while I think, yes, there's probably likely more to go down if we buy cash flowing. Rental properties, which we're still buying, by the way, if we buy properties at cash flow, it doesn't matter ultimately, if our properties lose a little bit of valuation. If we're cash flowing, we just hold on to them so we can weather any market. And also I think back to 2021, which, Peter, you remember so crazy. And I remember how many members of our community were saying, oh, it's too crazy to invest right now. I'm just going to sit on the sidelines. So I just want to point out there's always going to be a reason that quote, unquote, you should sit on the sidelines. But there's a huge danger in sitting on the sidelines because you miss that opportunity to build. And real estate is not like the stock market, where whatever price it is, is the price you're going to get it at. Real estate has a lot of inefficiencies. And you, you really almost like, it's like insider trading. You know, you can get access to a deal that nobody el access to. So that makes it very unique compared to something where you're just buying a stock just like other millions of people and you're not getting any special deal. Real estate, you can still get deals. So it doesn't matter what the market is doing, you can still get deals. And the real danger is sitting out and not taking action and waiting for the perfect time, because the perfect time never comes.

All right, so why should people go get this book right now? I know that right now, depending on when people are listening to this, but at the time they're hearing this, there's an opportunity to get this at a pretty good price, at least on Amazon. Why should people go right now, go online, go get that Kindle version and go ahead and read this this weekend?

The reason is it's 99 cents this week. So that's a really big deal to be able to get it on the Kindle. If you want to buy the paperback or the hardback, you know, that's regular price. But the 99 cent is, is a great savings and as soon as you start reading it, you're going to be getting tools no matter where you are. Real estate journey, even if you're completely new or if you've been doing this a couple years, you're going to get some tools out of it that you could immediately start applying. And that's really going to help you maximize the income coming in from your portfolio or take that first step to start building this other source of income. So the sooner you read it, the sooner you're going to be able to apply it. I think about whether or not we, you know, if we had read Rich dad, poor dad five years earlier, where would we be? So read it as fast as you can.

Yeah. And it's also a good time to actually share, share this gift to, to others. We actually were talking to somebody yesterday who boug. Got seven copies at the 99 cent price and sent it to their friends. So it's a really, really great gift for somebody, especially if they're stuck or if they're, if they're really wanting that freedom. They're wanting another way to generate income in addition to their doctor salary. This is a really great way to do it. So this would be a nice, nice gift for, for other people.

Yeah, I know that Peter, and our, both of our communities, people oftentimes hide that they're investing in real estate or they're doing other sources of passive income because they feel like they're supposed to just be doctors and that's the only way to be a good do. Well, this is a way to be able to talk to real estate about somebody, but not with somebody, but not like talk about that you're doing it, but be able to share in a, in a more subtle way. So I think that's another good reason.

Awesome. You also mentioned you have something else to share with our community. You want to mention that?

Yeah, yeah. So we wanted to offer all of you guys who are interested in starting to explore real estate and who get the book and are really inspired a way to see examples of how people are doing this in real life. So we have something called ignite your journey. It's our little kind of mini course introduction and it's normally $200 doll dollars and we're happy to be able to give it to this community. For free. And we'll put, we'll give Peter the link so he can put it into the show notes. And if you're just saying, you know, is real estate investing right for me, this is a great resource for you to be able to start and see real examples from our community rather than just relying on what happens in the book.

All right, I love that. So if you're listening to this, you're interested in, you know, starting in real estate or you want to kind of ignore, ignite your journey, you want to go further in real estate, you want to figure out how to build your portfolio, create that life. It seems like this is a road map. I've got my copy. I'm going to be reading that tomorrow when I'm on a plane and again, so go ahead and go get it. It's going to be an amazing story. I'm excited to read it and share it with other people as well, too. So you guys doing awesome work. It's always great talking to you guys and I know that this is just another step in your journey. But thanks for sharing this. I'm excited to hear more about where you guys are going to go next year and everything you're doing. So everybody go out, run out and go get the book. Life on your own, life on your terms. Right? And go ahead and check that out. So thanks, everyone. Bye.

Thanks, Peter.

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